Association pour l’anthropologie du changement social et du développement
Association for the anthropology of social change and development

West African labour migration in the German asylum system

Auteur(s) : Korvensyrjä Aino ;

This paper examines West African migrants’ strategies in Germany, using the asylum system to access paid work, to enhance their and their extended families’ life chances in West Africa. The paper relies on my doctoral fieldwork conducted between 2015 and 2022 with West African men facing deportation in southern Germany and Berlin and with social movements. The German migration regime gives ordinary West Africans barely any other migration possibilities besides asylum, while the administration labels West Africans as undeserving of asylum. Yet by concealing their identity documents, these migrants succeeded in halting most deportations to West Africa and, often, obtaining a work permit in Germany. Their pursuits were facilitated by labour shortages in Germany during the time, and related legal reform conceding work permits and access to regularisation to a part of rejected asylum seekers. The rest were more intensely criminalised and policed. The paper examines this dynamic as an interplay of migrant struggles –discreet everyday practices and public protests – and policing.


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Voir le panel / Beyond Displacement. Labour Mobilities in Times of Crisis in West Africa.

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